I think you can find the Milo Rau production online — it's an unorthodox starting point but a good one if you're interested in how it reads today. The Salzburg production I shared a clip from is on YouTube in its entirety (and with subtitles). It's also a good one, although the final beats are a bit weird in that "It's 2003 and we're in Austria so we have to be weird" way.
“I’m struck by how often we hear that art ‘can lift us above the divisive rhetoric of present-day politics’ only as a defense when an artist takes a job that is linked to the oppressor rather than the oppressed; that’s more in service of power than people.”
This framing is both inaccurate and dismissive. Women's attractiveness has never hinged on straight men's approval (and for what it's worth, lesbians hardly lack for conventional beauty, though that's beside the point).
If I get clout from my queerness, that's news to me (certainly wasn't the case when I was in high school and not allowed to go to winter formal with my girlfriend). I don't feel the need to defend my use of the word, but I use it very precisely. Moreover, the least-qualified person to adjudicate bi for clout is a heterosexual.
Who shat in my cornflakes? Honestly, probably the same people who decided straight men get to be the arbiters of queer identity.
As for your actual question: queer and lesbian aren't interchangeable. Lesbian is a specific identity; queer is a broader, deliberately unruly one that for me means attraction across genders and a refusal to package myself neatly for heterosexual legibility. If that sounds complicated, that's because it is. Sexuality isn’t a commodity to be shelved between Tony the Tiger and heteronormativity at the supermarket of cultural industry.
And respectfully, if you think my queerness is just bi for clout, that's a skill issue. Touch grass, touch any book published after 1987, and stop expecting queer people to serve you Gender 101 over breakfast.
Great essay. I'll have to dig deeper into "La Clemenza di Tito"
I think you can find the Milo Rau production online — it's an unorthodox starting point but a good one if you're interested in how it reads today. The Salzburg production I shared a clip from is on YouTube in its entirety (and with subtitles). It's also a good one, although the final beats are a bit weird in that "It's 2003 and we're in Austria so we have to be weird" way.
“I’m struck by how often we hear that art ‘can lift us above the divisive rhetoric of present-day politics’ only as a defense when an artist takes a job that is linked to the oppressor rather than the oppressed; that’s more in service of power than people.”
🔥🔥
Thinking about Trump's health this weekend, I was reminded of how, whenever there was a crisis in the USSR, state television would play Swan Lake.
I'm curious what you mean by "for a [lesbian]." Are lesbians not attractive? (Also just for clarity, I'm queer, not a lesbian.)
This framing is both inaccurate and dismissive. Women's attractiveness has never hinged on straight men's approval (and for what it's worth, lesbians hardly lack for conventional beauty, though that's beside the point).
If I get clout from my queerness, that's news to me (certainly wasn't the case when I was in high school and not allowed to go to winter formal with my girlfriend). I don't feel the need to defend my use of the word, but I use it very precisely. Moreover, the least-qualified person to adjudicate bi for clout is a heterosexual.
Who shat in my cornflakes? Honestly, probably the same people who decided straight men get to be the arbiters of queer identity.
As for your actual question: queer and lesbian aren't interchangeable. Lesbian is a specific identity; queer is a broader, deliberately unruly one that for me means attraction across genders and a refusal to package myself neatly for heterosexual legibility. If that sounds complicated, that's because it is. Sexuality isn’t a commodity to be shelved between Tony the Tiger and heteronormativity at the supermarket of cultural industry.
And respectfully, if you think my queerness is just bi for clout, that's a skill issue. Touch grass, touch any book published after 1987, and stop expecting queer people to serve you Gender 101 over breakfast.